Patience.

I often hear, “Don’t ask for patience! [Because when you do] the Lord is going to give you opportunities to grow and strengthen that fruit of patience!”

True or not, it’s kind of comical among “the church people” and a phrase I think about often.

As a mother, in my short years of motherhood, I have pleaded many times for the Lord to give me more patience with the little humans I have been blessed to raise.

I have also come to terms that the responsibility of motherhood is intertwined deeply with the Holy Fruit of Patience. Perhaps it’s not coincidental I’ve asked for patience as many times as I have…

Most of what I do; most of what I desire to teach; most of what I try to prepare my children for won’t be brought to a full understanding until much later, by the grace of God. God has equipped me, and is equipping me daily, to plant seeds of Truth in the garden of their young lives and to help trim and nurture their growing branches of faith in Jesus Christ so that when the times comes for them to blossom into the disciples and leaders they’re called to be, they’ll be ready. They’ll be ready to discern and listen to Him who guides and leads them.

While I cannot dictate whether or not they allow those seeds I prayerfully and passionately planted in their lives as young boys to come to fruition, I hope, with great anticipation, that the Lord will fan into flame the gifts He planted in them through my fallible efforts as mom.

I’m convinced there will be nothing more beautiful and stressful as a mother than being given the responsibility to raise my boys to love and trust in the God, and to love others, only to HOPE that when I release them into the world as young, discerning men, they won’t turn from the Truth.

But I cling to the promises found in Psalms 32:8, “I [God] will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.” and John 10:27-29, “ My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.”

He will instruct me and show me the way I should go as a mother and even when I fail, I cannot be snatched out of His hands; furthermore, He also instructs each of my boys’ hearts and teaches them the way they should go, never being plucked from His hands.

Amen!

This process, this gifting, requires tremendous patience.

This requires constant reinforcement of Truth; constant surrender of my will to the Father’s will; and frequent discussions and reminders about the fundamentals of Truth, and how we, as believers, are called to a different way of living and thinking than the world.

Sometimes we, as mothers, witness the breakthrough in understanding; sometimes we become witness to the moving of the Holy Spirit in the lives of our children, but sometimes God chooses to move in private, years after the seeds have been planted.

We can’t control when these seeds blossom. We can’t control when their minds are able and willing to conceive these Truth’s fully. We can only entrust our humble efforts to the One who orchestrates it all.

Motherhood is a labor of love, selflessness, sacrifice and patient endurance. For sure.

Patient Endurance

When you read the Bible, the word patient or patience is often used within a passage of scripture using words like “wait; take heart; perseverance; endurance; hope.”

Patience, in Greek, is makrothymia, meaning patience, endurance, constancy, steadfastness, perseverance, longsuffering, slowness to avenge wrongs.

This Greek word is also translated makrothymos meaning with longanimity. (It’s okay, I to look this word up too- it means “a disposition to bear injuries, hardship, or offense patiently.”)

To have patience, therefore, literally means to have a disposition to bear hardships longer (longsuffering), patiently. To be patient means to have the ability to hold ones temper (or fleshly desires) for a long time.

Can you see the parallels of motherhood and this Fruit of the Holy Spirit?! Can you see how critical it is to allow the Spirit to grow this fruit in our lives, as mothers, for our children? Our husband?

Let’s look at some Biblical Truths about patience…

Wisdom Yields Patience

A person’s wisdom yields patience; it is ones glory to overlook an offense.
Proverbs 19:11

Now, as believers, we aren’t to take literally this passage, saying our own wisdom yields patience. For we know that True wisdom comes from fear of God and seeking discernment of God’s Word. It’s the wisdom we receive from Him through the Spirit, that yields patience.

Worldly wisdom is about self achievement and reaching success within a time frame we set for ourselves, and is not concerned about honoring God in its pursuits.

Patience is Understanding

Whoever is patient has great understanding, but one who is quick-tempered displays folly.
Proverbs 14:29

Patience equates to understanding. A quick-temper, an uncontrollable impulse, or impatient or discontented disposition leads to one’s folly or foolishness.

When we live by the wisdom received from God, our hearts can be at peace which leads to a fruitful life, pleasing and glorifying to God.

Patience is Preparing for the Future

Preach the Word! Keep your sense of urgency [stand by, be at hand and ready], whether the opportunity seems to be favorable or unfavorable. [Whether it is convenient or inconvenient, whether it is welcome or unwelcome, you as preacher of the Word are to show people in what way their lives are wrong.] And convince them, rebuking and correcting, warning and urging and encouraging them, being unflagging and inexhaustible in patience and teaching.
2 Timothy 4:2

Through patient endurance and perseverance, we are called, relating to our topic of motherhood, to preach the word to our children. Even when the opportunities to do so seem unfavorable, inconvenient, welcome or unwelcome.

We are to call our kids out when they’re living in sin with gentleness and patient endurance so that while they’re under our care, we can teach them how to come to the Father. We can teach them how to acknowledge their own mistakes, seek forgiveness, receive forgiveness, and give forgiveness.

By no stretch of the imagination am I suggesting I do all things well, but this passage is dear to my heart. I can’t read it and not feel the conviction of my responsibility as a mother and woman of God.

Ask my husband Jaron, every single moment I think there is a way to tie in God’s Word to a discussion we’re having with the boys, I do it. And humbly, many times the very thing I am teaching them about God’s Word strikes my own heart with conviction.

It’s funny, just when I feel I am making a breakthrough in parenting a child, I myself am also being parented by my Heavenly Father. While I am confronting a behavior in one of the boys, my Heavenly Father is also using my boys’ situation to confront a behavior of mine that needs changing.

I’ve said it before, many “Christians” live as if the pinnacle of faith is accepting Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. But how foolish to think that our maturity and growth ends there; it’s only begun!

Just like my children need to grow and mature in the Truth of God from a young age, I must do the same now at age 33 until the Lord calls me home. We must always be learning and growing in the Truth of Him.

So even if I get eye rolls or annoyed looks; even if we’re in the middle of dinner at a restaurant; even if we’re shopping at the grocery store; even if we’re on an afternoon walk down the driveway; even if it’s bedtime and we’re all pooped out from the day, I must never pass up an opportunity to teach, correct and rebuke my children. And likewise, I must never be above reproach to receive from God a lesson I also need to hear through my children’s lessons.

If I depend on any one else to teach my boys what I know to be THE Truth, it’s not going to happen. I am not convinced it’s going to be with the Godly wisdom we know to be correct, nor will it be with the patient endurance that only comes from the Holy Spirit of God.

I have a responsibility, a conviction, right now, while my children are under our roof, to start my children off on THE WAY they should go, so that when they are old, they will not turn from it. (referenced Prov. 22:6)

God is Just to those who Demonstrate Patience

God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them. We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, so that what you hope for may be fully realized. We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.
Hebrews 6:10-12

Motherhood is hard.

It is a beautifully, messy, unpredictable, underappreciated, sacrificial, challenging, unwavering, and loving calling on our lives. And it is only with the fruits of the Holy Spirit, especially the Fruit of Patience, that we can endure all the in-betweens until we reach the promise of the end.

This passage is the epitome of patience, to me.

Even when you feel unheard, unseen, unappreciated, momma, God will not forget your work or the love you extended to your family, and to others who were not family, like friends of your children.

Even when you felt like giving up because your efforts seems to be bouncing off the wall or the closed door or the hardened heart of your child, God still sees you and wants you to press on still with that same diligence and patient endurance because He will remember you; He sees you day in and day out, in your coming and going; He will remember all the love you poured out in His name; He will remember your child and when the time is right, He will fan into the flame the gifts instilled in them by you through His Spirit through your parenting.

Don’t give up. Take heart. Endure. Persevere.

“…We know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” Romans 5:3-4

Patient Hope

As we seek to live a life worthy of motherhood, bearing His fruit of Patience, I encourage you, friend, to consider the following passages of hope:

“…so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light.”
Colossians 1:10-12

“We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up. For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: ‘The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.’ For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope. May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Romans 15:1-6

“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”
Colossians 3:12-13

“Jesus replied, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22:37-40

Remember, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control are not natural for the flesh, these gifts come only from the Father through His Spirit.

You will fall short. Your child will fall short. But God is merciful and graceful to forgive and to set you on the path of righteousness again, through Jesus. Allow grace to flow through your weaknesses and their shortcomings. God has you. God has your children. God has your family.